2009 Chicago CoCoFEST! Report

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 00:31:42 -0500

NOTE: There are still some things missing in this report. Check back and I will update it. The latest revision (4/1/2009) is marked at the top, and changes will be in that color (red).

2009 Chicago CoCoFEST!
(March 27-28, Elgin, IL)
by Allen Huffman of Sub-Etha Software
(3/31/2009, 4/1/2009-2)

NOTE: Any mistakes in this report are most likely unintentional, as I am completely relying on the spelling and grammar checker of my modern computer to catch them all.

Too bad there isn’t a fact checker.

TIMELINE

Is is just a few months after our nation elects our first President of African descent. Digital Television has partially been switched on. The mortgage industry, banking industry, and car industry have received bailouts from the government. “Slum Dog Millionaire” was big at the Oscars. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is on Dancing with the Stars. Rumors of the 3rd generation Apple iPhone circulate on the internet.

THE DRIVE

Ever since I moved to Des Moines, Iowa in the summer of 1995, my drives to the Chicago CoCoFEST! have been much easier. Instead of the wonderful sixteen hour drive from Lufkin, Texas to Chicagoland, now a mere six hours is all I have to endure.

This trip started with an amazing amount of non-preparedness. Or perhaps it really wasn’t so amazing, since it seems the last several years have had similar amounts of non-preparedness as well.

After a normal 8-5 day of working in a cubicle in downtown Des Moines, I headed home to pack clothing and decide what I will be bringing. Choosing which past CoCoFest shirt to pack was probably my most difficult decision.

Clothing and toiletries? Packed. (I decided to bring my “FLYNN’S” shirt, from the arcade in the movie TRON. For some reason, I made the decision to leave behind the normal universe shirt I wear, as well as my bathrobe covered in past fest name badges as well as my towel. I blame this on the cold I had been trying to get over for several weeks.)

Apple MacBook Pro laptop, HD video camera, tripod, and digital camera? Packed. I would be ready to document like I’ve never documented before. This could be the last show, after all.

CoCo 3 prototype? Found and packed. I wondered if anyone new would show up that hasn’t already seen it.

Acoustic guitar with rusty strings? Found and packed. I wondered how much it would hurt to play on rusty strings.

L.E.D. scrolling BetaBrite light display? Found and packed. I wondered if the batteries in the remote are still good.

Portable P.A. amplifier and wireless microphone system? Found and packed. What the heck.

Remaining stock of my CoCoFest Chronicles book? Still missing in action, but I know there are dozens in that storage room somewhere. Maybe next year...

By 5:30 p.m. I was on my way across town, stopping briefly to air up my tires and fill up with gas. I was driving my blue 2007 model Toyota Prius -- the second Prius I have owned (after trading in my original 2005 model for my current one). Proper tire inflation would ensure the best gas mileage.

Gone were the days of bringing along road atlases or even printed out MapQuest maps. My car has a built-in GPS navigation system and that was all I was taking with me. My how times had changed. Sure, I’d taken a few late-90’s trips to Chicago in my old Honda Civic using a laptop-based GPS system belted in to the passenger seat, but those days seem so primitive compared to now. And, what lay ahead of me would be even more primitive than that. Was I really going off, once again, to celebrate a twenty-nine year old home computer?

I was. And I was excited about it.

My drive was uneventful. Thanks to a full tank of gas in my hybrid, I didn’t even have to stop, though I did go through a McDonald’s drive-through somewhere along the way. Since I had my camera with me, I was also attempting to record short video segments during the journey, starting as I packed my car and then a few times later. I hoped I could edit together something more interesting to watch than this section is to read. I wondered what the folks at the gas station thought as they watched me talking to a camera sitting on top of my car.

I drove and drove and drove and paid a few tolls. At just after 11 p.m. I was close enough to my destination that I decided to give Steve Bjork a call. (Yes, that Steve Bjork. The one who wrote all those CoCo games before moving on to writing all those console games before moving on to creating all those websites.) Somehow in the time between my last CoCoFest report in 1997 and today I had become close friends with Steve, and he was generously offering to share his hotel room with me.

Steve was still up, and a small group at the hotel was sitting around taking bets on when I would arrive. They group bet 11:30, while Steve had his virtual money on midnight. It looked like Steve was going to lose this one, as my GPS showed I would be there around 11:30. As it turns out, Steve took away the virtual winnings due to a few toll booth delays that had me arriving at the hotel just before midnight. Lucky guess.

THE ARRIVAL

I pulled around the Elgin Holiday Inn and parked around the backside near where the conference room was. As I walked in to the hotel, I noticed the doors to the room were closed and the sign outside did not say CoCoFest. Had the location moved? Were we downsized to a smaller venue?

I continued to the lobby where I found Steve and about a dozen other CoCoists sitting around in an empty bar area, talking.

I was home again.

Others present including Brother Jeremy (our CoCo monk), Keith, John Strong and his wife, John Linville, Canadian William Astal, and probably some others that I didn’t get photos of.

THE PRE-SHOW

Since it was so late, most everyone else had already gone to bed. I found out that due to a wedding (or anniversary, or something along those lines), Glenside did not have access to the show room until early Saturday morning. This has happened in the past, and was no doubt inconvenient to those who have to get up extra early to set up the show.

The party ended and we headed off to our rooms. I got to spend some time getting caught up with Steve before finally going to sleep around 2 a.m. Our wake-up alarm was set for 8 o’clock, but who expects sleep at a CoCoFEST!?

8 a.m. came much too soon. We got up and headed out to search for a cheap and quick breakfast. We decided to drive to a nearby McDonald’s and eat there, then Steve suggested we stop by a Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up some treats for the show. The first one we stopped at was out of glazed donuts. (See Monty Python’s “Cheese Shop” sketch.) Fortunately, a second Dunkin’ across from the hotel actually had the single most popular type of donut, so two dozen assorted were bought to be shared later that morning at the show.

Once back at the hotel, we walked in to the conference room to find it completely set up, though a few late rising vendors who were still lugging things in from their cars or rooms. Someone got up much earlier than we did.

THE SHOW AREA

2009 Chicago:

No show guide was provided, so this will be from memory.

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My memory is obviously pretty poor.

Bargeman Research Labs - Karl Sefcic had his usual table full of various random oddities, some that plugged in, and some that you just looked at. He has been showing up and buying a table just to support the Fest for as long as I can remember, and after all these years, I’m still not sure what all he does.
 Richard & Brenda Crislip - ?
 Cloud-9 - This is one of the few remaining active Color Computer companies. Mark Marlette (from Minnesota) and Boisy Pitre (a former Microware guy, from Lousiana) were there to show off the usual assortment of “wow, if only we could have done this back then” items. There was the SuperIDE hard drive interface, which allowed you to plug a Compact Flash card directly in to it and run completely disk-less. There was also the SIMM memory upgrade, Protector+ (to help reduce your 6809 from getting zapped), and various other bits of software and hardware.

New this year was the release of DriveWire 3, a mechanism to allow a CoCo to use a PC, Mac or Linux machine as a remote disk drive via the serial bitbanger port. NitrOS-9 drivers were provided, and for DISK BASIC users, a modern update to the old RGB-DOS was available, now called HDB-DOS. It allowed up to 256 virtual CoCo floppy drives across a serial port on the host computer.

DriveWire version 3 included updates such as 115K baud through the bitbanger, which now made it faster than a physical floppy drive (when using a fast host computer). The best part: Unlike the past two versions, now DriveWire was being released as a free product. Huzzah!

Another interesting product was a two-DVD set called “Learn Your Color Computer.” It carried the copyright notice of 1988-2008, which seemed odd. It turns out this was a DVD copy of a thirteen-episode tutorial series produced by Christopher Mayeux (a name which sounds really familiar). The series aired on public television in 1988 and 1989. A master tape copy was located, and permission was granted to reproduce the show on DVD. The set sold for $25.
 DTV Information - John Mark Mobley had a table with several digital TV converter boxes and a tall antenna. He was showing off the differences between the user interface in the converter boxes, and answering questions about just what kind of antenna it took to receive good Hi Definition TV signals. We mused that soon all the old TVs with analog tuners will be gone, and you won’t have a way to hook a CoCo up. Perhaps we need a CoCo-to-HDMI converter? :)
 Frank Pittel - ?
 FWD Computing/Good Life Productions LLC - Frank Davis was there, though sans wife this trip. He reported that so many shows had cancelled and sales had slowed down so much he had to return to a day job -- teaching psychology, I think it was. He sold this year’s Fest T-Shirt, which featured a photo of the Glenside IDE interface, as well as some new packages of public domain audio books and some DVDs. Their old-time radio programs and independent film DVDs did not seem to be available any more. 
The Glenside Color Computer Club - Here you could pay for admission and get your name tag. To really make their day, you could also renew your club dues. You are a member of Glenside, aren’t you? If not, please join and support their efforts to keep the CoCo alive a bit longer.
 Glenside MARK II IDE Interface - Nearby, Glenside was trying to sell of its remaining inventory of their club-designed IDE interface boards. The huge bare board is a bulky beast, but it was one of the first ways to hook a modern IDE drive to the CoCo.

Also at the Glenside booth, orders were being taken for a Glenside Color Computer Club jacket. Depending on how many sign up, the price could be below $50. The jackets looked nice, and a variety of colors was available. The logo would be embroidered (very nicely) on to the jacket, and the colors adjusted for whatever color jacket it was on.
 Griff-Art - ?
 Hawksoft - Chris and Nancy Hawks were there with a booth of classic Hawksoft products like the CoCo 3 software to drive a Tandy Plug-N-Power interface. I think he may have also had some of his recently-developed CoCo-to-SVGA adapters. He ran his booth CoCo on an SVGA LCD monitor and it looked great, displaying RGB colors and easily readable 80 column text.

James & Billie Jones - Former Microwareoid, James Jones, shared a table with his witty wife, Billie, just to support the club. It was neat seeing James running Linux on one of those tiny little netbook laptops, and puzzling to see Billie challenge us to figure out why there was a stuffed monkey on the table, with one arm wrapped around a Mountain Dew bottle, and the other holding a bag of Fritos, while a small vending-machine packaged coffee cake sat in front of it.

Are you geek enough to figure it out?
 Lost Wizard Enterprises - ? 
Luckey Corner - Howard Luckey. 
Malcolm Cleveland’s Not-For-Sale CoCo Memorabilia - Malcom had a table full of CoCoFest T-shirts he had collected over the years. Most of them I have, but there were at least two I was unfamiliar with (not counting his 1980’s-era Rainbowfest shirts). Very neat, and I may bring my collection along next Fest, since I have AtlantaFest and PennFest shirts. Perhaps we can make a wall display that represents EVERY Color Computer show? (Anyone have a Color Expo T-Shirt? Or a Pacific Northwest CoCoFest shirt?)

Monk-O-Ware - Brother Jeremy continues to show up with his production-run prototype CoCo 3s which were acquired from Microware, including the one that Mark Hawkins used to develop CoCo OS-9 on. (Mark Hawkins is one of the “Three Mugateers” that is seen in the hidden CoCo 3 easter egg screen.) It was interesting to note that the rear panel of this CoCo had stickers where eventually case molding would label the ports. A nearby note pointed this out, as if Tandy were still trying to figure out the final layout of the machine.

The mysterious 1983 prototype CoCo “ethernet” pak was also on display, though last year Scott Griepentrog (formerly of StG Net Software) identified these boards as possibly being ARCNET network cards. ARCNET was an early networking protocol, and Microware used ARCNET and had OS-9 drivers for it, so it seemed plausible.

But, during the run of this CoCoFEST!, CoCo mailing list member Steven Hirsh saw the photos of similar prototype boards I posted to my CoCoFest photo blog. He identified them as “Corvus Omninet” boards, whatever that is, and had no idea such cards were ever created for the CoCo. He has since posted some follow-up information to the list describing this system, which was a way to share a hard drive. It worked on a number of computer systems.

Has one more mystery of the CoCo prototypes been solved? (No such product was ever released, or had been even rumored to exist, for the CoCo... Yet we have now located three of these CoCo cards!) 
The Music Man - Brian Schubring used to have musical friends that would join him at these shows. Back then they were known as the Music Men. Today, Brian is the last man standing (the others have moved away) but he still shows up with various retro synthesizer gear to play MIDI versions of the national anthems (USA, Canada and now England) at the start of the show. He also provides the sound system for Fest announcements, and for the Saturday night music jam. Although it seemed he was playing the music off of a PC initially, he did successfully get his CoCo and Ultimuse running by show end. 
Roy R Justus - A few years back, Roy developed a CoCo-to-VGA adapter box. He still makes them, and sold out of the seven he brought to the show. I have one, and am just waiting for the right deal on a VGA LCD monitor so I can forever retire my CM-8.

Another thing Roy was responsible for this year was the retrieval and transporation of about eight huge boxes full of Color Computer merchandise. It seems someone had ended up with the remaining stock of a Radio Shack store years ago, as well as their own personal CoCo stuff, and finally had to let it go to anyone who could pick it up.

Glenside arranged for Roy to be this person, and these boxes contained tons of shrink wrapped CoCo software. One box was filled with hundreds of ROM paks! I instantly wanted to buy them and sell them off on e-Bay, but Mark Marlette got to it first. Other items in the boxes were sold in the auctions. A club member offered to store the unsold items until next year, but only up to four boxes so everything else had to go. It was an interesting find. 
SRB Software - The CoCo 4 Projects - Steve Bjork is probably best known to the CoCo community as the guy who wrote the Zaxxon port for the CoCo 1. During his days at Datasoft, then later through companies like GamePoint Software and his own SRB Software, he cranked out more games than you could shake an analog CoCO joystick act. From the very early games of Clowns and Balloons to later CoCo 3 classics such as ports of arcade Arkanoid and Rampage, Steve was one of -- if not the -- most prolific CoCo game programmers we had, and one of the only ones who ever worked on officially licensed ports.

But that wasn’t why he was at the show.

Initially, he joined us a few years back just to check things out for “old time’s sake” but there must have been some spark left from all his years he spent earning his living off of CoCo programming that ignited his desire to get back involved, and maybe create a new product.

It turns out, Steve is also a hardware guy -- he developed a light pen in the TRS-80 days, as well as the Tandy Hi-Res Joystick Interface for the CoCo. He was at this show to give us an update on the “CoCo 4 Project” he announced last year. Details on this can be found below in the SEMINARS section.

THE SEMINARS

A variety of very interesting seminars were held this year. I video taped each seminar, too, in high definition and with a wireless microphone. Eventually these videos will be made available on DVD or even online via YouTube.com. Until then, here is my foggy recollection...
 Saturday:

10:30 - “Cloud-9 Updates” - Mark Marlette and Boisy Pitre

A projection screen and projector was made available. Boisy Pitre sat down at a table in front of his laptop and walked us through just what the new DriveWire 3 could do.

The new enhancements included much faster I/O (faster than real floppy drive), and new NitrsOS-9 support for a virtual printer port -- allowing a CoCo to “print” through the DriveWire protocol and capture the data on the host computer. Very cool stuff!

Next, Mark Marlette took over, giving us an update of the past year for Cloud-09, as well as updating us on the status of the SuperBoard. His slide presentation was full of many photos, including showing us some of the industrial equipment he has access to at his job which he gets to use for the CoCo projects. A computer scanning drill thing is being used to precisely calculate board layouts for how the SuperBoard module will plug in to a CoCo. Very cool stuff here, too!

Mark was also wanting to show us a new flash ROM pak device, capable of storing over sixty 32K CoCo ROM paks in one small pak, but a last-minute problem cropped up and the prototype was not working. Of interest, this pak -- which will allow the CoCo to program the different banks via software -- also emulates the bank switching ROM code found in Robocop and Predator. Currently, you cannot clone those ROM paks since they contained special bank switching hardware in the cartridge.

11:30 - “FWD Computing” - Frank Davis

Frank has given seminars in the past about his collection of public domain and rare audio/video discs. This year, he mostly was getting us caught up with what has been going on with FWD over the past two years. (They were unable to attend the 2008 event.)

Always the showman, he ended his talk by going through a selection of new products he was offering. He sold out of several sizes of Fest T-shirts, but anyone who wants one can contact him and he can have more made and shipped.

12:15 - “Group Photo” - John Strong

Although not a seminar, and not originally scheduled to happen until 3 p.m., John Strong gathered everyone together outside the conference room for a group photo, similar to what he did last year. This time, there were several professional camera lights provided to better illuminate the photo. After a few shots, then a few more from others with high end digital SLR cameras (like Steve Bjork, and not like me), we returned to the Fest.

A few hours later, John brought down a HUGE printout of this photo and collected autographs. Everyone present signed (or was supposed to sign!) the photo, and John then donated it to the No-Minimum-Bid Auction. During the auction, bidding ended at $50 as Steve Bjork and Billie Jones battled it out. Billie finally won. John deserves special thanks for making it possible for Glenside to make a few extra bucks. (As do Steve and Billie for their bidding war.)

John sold smaller copies of the photo for $10 each. What a great souvenir!

1:15 - “CoCo 4 Project” - Steve Bjork

First, some quick background for those asking “what is a CoCo 4?”

Tandy discontinued the CoCo before a CoCo 4 could ever be released. A few other companies tried to carry on the CoCo legacy with OS-9/68000 machines such as the Interactive Media Systems MM/1, Frank Hogg Labs Tomcat/TC-9, and the Delmar System IV. None of these really made much of an impact, and none had the heart and soul of what made the CoCo so special (though they were all fine next generation machines that could have arguably been better than the IBM-PCs of the day, with proper software support).

Steve had experienced various Color Computer emulators, and it seemed to him the best way to achieve a CoCo 4 today was simply to create a virtual one. The CoCo 4 project would be comprised of several projects:

First, emulators are fine for someone who just wants to casually check out the old green screen BASIC, or run some old ROM pak or tape games, but it is still difficult to preserve any old CoCo software you may have. When is the last time you had a PC with a 5 1/4” floppy drive? Also, emulators lack the “real CoCo” feel to them, since you use a PC keyboard and mouse, rather than CoCo keys and the old analog joystick.

The first goal is to create a CoCo I/O interface board that would plug up to a PC and provide CoCo serial, joystick and cassette ports as well as the 40-pin cartridge connector. A custom programmed CPU on this card would be able to pull data off of a ROM pak (for creating emulator images) or retrieve raw sector information from an FD-501 floppy drive. The device would literally be able to read in the sectors of a copy protected CoCo disk, and create a virtual clone of that disk, protection and all, to run in an emulator. The I/O board would also allow you to plug up a CoCo keyboard, joystick and even 4-pin serial DMP printer and use them through PC emulation -- finally giving the emulator access to real CoCo peripherals. A very interesting and exciting idea.

The CoCo itself would be emulated. The current choice is the VCC emulator (originally called Bjork, in tribute to Steve, though Steve asked the author to change the name due to inquiries from users thinking Steve wrote it). It is hoped that the author of this emulator would be willing to add support for the I/O board.

It is hoped that by the next Fest, the I/O board will be ready.

Next the plan takes a very interesting twist thanks to new advances in PC hardware. The nVidia graphics chip company has recently announced a reference platform called the Ion. It is a tiny PC that could literally fit inside a CoCo where the power supply would go. Using a small micro-PC like this, you could mount it and the I/O board inside a real CoCo case, then via emulation you would have something that truly felt like a real CoCo, right down to plugging in a CoCo joystick or Tandy serial printer. There could even be reset and power switches on the back that would toggle the emulator.

Steve says that now, instead of repacking a CoCo in a PC case, it is possible to repack a PC in a CoCo case...and run CoCo stuff, as well as having a pretty powerful PC for running Windows or Linux. Imagine a CoCo in your living room hooked to your TV, which is also acting as a media server.

It boggles the mind.

The final part of the project is for those who loved how much fun it was to program on a CoCo, but haven’t since moving to a modern computer. The goal is to bring out a new version of SUPER EXTENDED COLOR BASIC. This would be a CoCo-like BASIC, enhanced with modern concepts such as Object Oriented Programming. Using the power of today’s computers, someone who programmed on the CoCo for fun, but hasn’t done it since, could revisit those days and write modern powerful programs in an environment that was familiar.

Three tasks: An enhanced emulator, a CoCo I/O board, and a modern SUPER BASIC. You can visit www.coco4.com to track progress.

2:15 - “CoCo Cross Development” - John Linville
 John gave a rather long and rather involved slide presentation of various cross development options for the CoCo. These included simple things like writing CoCo BASIC programs on a PC using a modern and fancy editor, then saving it as ASCII to load in to a real CoCo later. He also covered various existing cross compilers, allowing the compilation of CoCo 6809 assembly code on a high speed PC, then uploading the resulting binary to a real CoCo for testing. There were also various C compilers and other languages that are available, some with direct CoCo binary support, and many he believed could be made to work with some work.

It was a mind boggling talk that covered dozens and dozens of options I had never even heard of. There was even talk about remote debugging tools that might be used on with CoCo. Good job, John, even if my eyes were glazing over by the end.

Sunday:
 There were no seminars on Sunday -- but I did attend Brother Jeremy’s traditional 9 a.m. Sunday morning church service which started promptly at 9:30 a.m.

It should also be mentioned that Sunday started off with snow! Several inches of snow had fallen overnight, and the parking lot and trees were covered with beautiful white snow. Has there ever been a CoCoFest with snow? By the afternoon, a good portion of the snow had already melted off the cars, but California native Steve Bjork still managed to find enough to toss a nice snowball at me. (He better hope he never comes to visit me in Iowa in the winter. I’ll have much more ammunition.)

And now, to tie in the previous two paragraphs, to may be interesting to note that due to the snow, Brother Jeremy was not wearing his typical monk sandals. After the fest, his post to the CoCo mailing list read:

“Perhaps if I had brought my special snow sandals. These were made from old car tires by a Church sponsored group from Mexico. Since I always receive some good natured kidding due to my habit (no not that HABIT) of wearing sandals well into the winter, I went to a tire store and had snow studs put on them as well as making up little snow chains for them. I still remember the year I wore them at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.”

He had mentioned snow chain sandals at the festival, but I thought he was joking...

NEW STUFF

In early days of doing CoCoFEST! reports, I never had a section called “NEW STUFF” mostly because every Fest was full of new stuff. Today, this is no longer the case, though each show usually brings something new worth mentioning.

This time, I would like to mention something that John Linville brought along to show us. Roger Taylor, of CoCo3.com fame, has created a new RS232 pack for the CoCo...with a twist. It uses a 6551 and is compatible with the Tandy RS232 pack but instead of providing a DB25 serial connector on the end of the short ROM-pak sized case, he provides ... no connector.

Instead, inside is a Bluetooth wireless networking module connected to the serial chip. A PC with Bluetooth support (or, I suppose, Mac or Linux machine) can run a terminal program and communicate wirelessly to the CoCo! It’s not magic -- just standard RS232 stuff without the wires -- but it sure is neat! Now I won’t even have to move my CoCo close to my Mac if I chose to transfer files with something like this. (If only I could have bought one at the show!)

Roger is also working on software called CoCoNet, which is software to make use of the Bluetooth interface. A server runs on PC (Windows only, alas) and the CoCoNet software (which could be a ROM in the Pak, or loaded from disk) can then load and save across the wireless serial line -- similar to how Cloud-9’s DriveWire works across the bitbanger.

Roger is taking it one step further adn building in support on the Windows server side to let the CoCo “load” a program or mount a virtual disk image across the internet! Thus, the CoCo may have a command that tells the PC to mount something like “http://coco3.com/disk1.dsk” and then read and write to it! That sounds really neat. It also allows getting other types of files, such as a web HTML file. Although the PC is doing the heavy lifting, one could work out a basic HTML web browser using this.

Unfortunately, Roger was not at the show, and no one was representing his products, which is a pity. I bet he would have sold quite a few of these, especially after a demo of CoCoNet. Anyone want to try to talk him in to joining us in 2010? The 30th anniversary of the CoCo doesn’t happen every day, you know...

OTHER STUFF

Hmmm. I’ve never had an “OTHER STUFF” section before, either. Where did I put all the other stuff back then? Oh well...

The rest of the days were just spent mingling and visiting with old friends. On Saturday afternoon, Glenside’s Tony Podraza led us all in a game of HANGMAN. For some strange reason, this seemed to capture all our attention as we narrowly escaped the gallows by figuring out the mystery word:

AUCTION

Ah, I get it now. It must be time for the No-Minimum-Bid Auction. But first, Glenside’s Tony Podraza had to find a box...

Each day, Glenside’s Tony Podraza gave out a $25 cash prize in a random drawing (out of a box on Saturday, then a hat on Sunday). He then held the No-Minimum-Bid Auction to try to get that $25 back. Clever. Someone donated the $25 but I don’t recall who it was (Roy?).

For those who have never seen it, this odd event is what keeps Glenside in the black and ensures another fest next year. Without the income generated by this event over the years, the fests would have ended long ago.

This year, auction items included a few CoCo 1s, a Tano Dragon (I should have bid on that), several rare X-Pad graphics tablets, various joysticks, touch pads, ROM paks, disk software, full heigh belt driven floppy drives, used diskettes, random peripherals (including an inkjet fax/printer) and, frankly, some random crap -- all raising money for our good cause (another chance to get together next year!)

On Sunday, another game was played -- this time following rules similar to Wheel of Fortune. The clue read:

_ _ _ # _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ # _

_ _ _ _ _ # _ _ _ _ # _ _ # _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ # _

The “#” represented spaces, and punctuation also had to be guessed. This game seemed to draw us all in as we tried to figure out just what the hidden message was. Finally, after guessing enough letters, some of us figured out “COCOFEST” was the start of the last line... then Barbara from Fort Madison, Iowa guessed it:

“YES, VIRGINIA,
THERE WILL BE ANOTHER
COCOFEST”

But she was declared wrong by Glenside’s Tony Podraza... I immediately thought I knew the trick, thinking the final character would be a “?” question mark...as in, Glenside was about to start the auction, and that would let us know if there would be another fest. (Which would have been clever.)

It turns out, it really wasn’t that clever. The missing character was simply an exclamation point “!” -- which is how Glenside officially writes “CoCoFEST!” Brilliant.

Oh, and in case you missed it, this is how Glenside announced there would be a 2010 CoCoFEST!

Then we had another auction.

THE EVENINGS

On Saturday night, Glenside arranged reservations for all of us across the parking lot at Alexander’s, a restaurant with a very big menu and no perceivable specialty. Due to cold and rainy conditions, some of us chose to drive (myself, Steve Bjork and Frank Davis), while others chose to brave the elements and walked.

We took over one long table in a back area, then spilled down to the lower level to take up even more tables and mix with the normal folks. It was nice having everyone mostly together, but still not quite as nice as when Glenside had a special “CoCo Family Dinner” at the hotel a few years back. (That was special because it was just us; not us in a restaurant full of folks who probably thought were were a bunch of computer nerds. I wonder what gave them that idea?)

My Cobb salad was very tasty, and John Strong’s camera is much, much better than mine, capable of zooming in on the text of a coffee creamer and reading it.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel for the now-traditional Saturday night CoCo Jam session. I was still getting over a cold, so I did not even get around to bringing in my guitar. James Jones had his recorder (wind instrument), Rich Bair has his trumpet, Brian Schubring and Bob Swoger had their acoustic guitars, and Brother Jeremy led the band on his electric.

It took several amusing attempts for Brother Jeremy to remember the words to his own song, the classic “OS-9 Level 2 Upgrade” song written for Kevin Darling. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, since now that the Level 2 Upgrade has been released for many years, it’s not quite the topical song it used to be.

After a few more songs (The Lion Sleeps Tonight is always a favorite) and buying a Heineken for my friend George from New York (and him returning the favor), I was ready to head to bed. I have no idea how long the rest played, but I just wasn’t in to it. I think my cold just got the better of me. (Besides, they didn’t have the projector going so they could Google the words and chord progressions to songs like they did last year. That was cool.)

On Sunday, I was not around for any evening activities, if there were any. The fest started shutting down around 3 p.m. as folks began to pack up and head out.

SUMMARY

Overall, this was one of the more enjoyable CoCoFESTS! I’ve been too in recent years, possibly because I was forced to pay attention. Although the crowd was small, it was probably not any smaller than the past few years. I think I counted nearly fifty in the room at it’s peak. Some unexpected faces did show up, such as Eddie Kuns (KBCom) who made a Sunday appearance to show off photos of his new baby (Wow! He reproduced!). We also had a few token Canadians join us, thus requiring the show opening to be that much longer as the O Canada was played. (I blame Northern Xposure for starting up the Canadian CoCoFest invasion years ago. Where are they these days?)

On the downside, there really weren’t any new breakthrough products. There were no new arcade game ports like Donkey Kong a few years back, nor were there any new hardware breakthroughs like the VGA or SVGA adapters. Still, there was alot of enthusiasm and fun for several potential new products, like the Cloud-9 flash pack and the CoCo 4 project. Overall, I think this was enough to keep things interesting. It certainly inspired me enough to get back to writing fest reports!

Since I was forced to actually watch all the seminars (due to video recording them), I learned some really neat things. For instance, DriveWire 3 is incredible, and the Cloud-9 hardware lab is very impressive and has lots of wires. I learned that there were many ways to put a PC to good use writing CoCo software. I discovered “getting a day job” could mean being a professor of psychology somewhere. I learned that I really, really wanted to hook my CoCo back up and experience all the updates that have been done to NitrOS-9 over the past few years.

But most of all, I learned that I miss my CoCo, and even after so many years, there are still many, many things to learn about it. It is hard to convey this through a report or some photos on the internet, so I hope you find a way to make it to a fest... before there truly are no more.

RUMORS

Next year, 2010, will be the 19th Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! It will also be the 30th anniversary of the Color Computer. Glenside is considering moving the festival to the Fall (late September or early October) due to difficulties getting the conference room, but as of this writing, it sounds like the weekend of May 15-16 may be available... If you have an opinion (May 15-16 or September/October), let Glenside know A.S.A.P.

They even have a new website address where you can find out how to e-mail them: www.glensideccc.com

THE RETURN

After things shut down on Sunday, I offered to drop Steve off at the Chicago O’Hare Airport. Half an hour and a half dozen toll booths later, Steve was at the airport where he would spend a few hours before his flight back to Southern California. I was already missing all my friends from the Fest, especially those I really wanted to spend some time with but never got to.

My drive home was uneventful, other than getting to stop at “The World’s Largest Truck Stop” on I-80 again.

DISCLAIMER

Although I seem to have no problem remembering Bob Swoger these days, I still claim to have a terrible memory for names and faces. (Yet, “POKE 113,0:EXEC 40999” seems to stick around.) So please don’t be too upset if I forgot to mention you. Most likely, I really, really wanted to mention you but was afraid I might hurt your feelings if I couldn’t remember your name and had to describe you as “a big friendly guy from Glenside” or something. Feel free to let me know what I missed. In the modern days of the internet, it’s easy to republish...

THANKS

Obviously, big thanks goes to the members and officers of the Glenside Color Computer Club for making this event possible. Without the labor support of the group, and financial support of the members, I wouldn’t have had to spend the whole evening typing this report up.

Also thanks to Steve Bjork for allowing me to share a room with him. Without this, I would have only made a day trip to the fest due to financial concerns. Thanks, Steve. I owe ya.

Thanks to John Strong for the group photo -- one of my all-time favorite souvenirs. I wish I had one from every year!

Thanks to Brother Jeremy for always providing smiles, fun stories, and most important of all, Faith. They say God works in mysterious ways, and I think getting a bunch of us together for communion at a CoCoFEST! certainly qualifies. You are a great friend to all of us, and having you around has made these past years so much more enjoyable.

And lastly... Thanks to you for taking time out of your busy day to read through this incredibly long report.

Allen C. Huffman, formerly of Sub-Etha Software
alsplace@pobox.com on the Internet (“since 1995!”)
http://www.cocopedia.com (The CoCo Wiki)
P.O. Box 22031 / Des Moines, IA 50325

...and be sure to visit www.coco30.com and learn how you can help make the 2010 Chicago CoCoFEST! the biggest and best event in many years!

My Blog

2009 Chicago CoCoFEST! Report

Photos Uploaded!

Fest: Day 2

Fest: Day 1

Heading to Chicago...